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Ask HN: What are some of the ways to learn codebases
Last time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8263402 article appeared in 2014, I wanted to see if there are methodologies that people have adopted not listed in this article?
I would like to hear your experiences. Feel free to contribute here or at https://gist.github.com/hhimanshu/714962f4205d7dddc7e5991a86412805. I would make notes and update the page. Thanks
- gjvc 10y agoLearning a codebase requires fast navigation. ctags or a good IDE help with that.
- pizza 10y ago"Follow the money!" - but instead of money, follow the data; - sort source code by filesize - look at the large methods / code blocks - browse through the /examples/ and /tests/ dirs to familiarize yourself with typical usage
- zzzcpan 10y agoRuntime call tracing is the missing methodology. I haven't found anything better over the years and always implement them if I have to learn things quickly. Made one for nginx even.
- hhimanshu 10y agothank you. Could you elaborate on this method please?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dsschnau 10y agoBiggest thing for me is to talk to whomever wrote it, or if they're not available, whomever has the most knowledge of the codebase.